


But I Knew Him [Fragments]

by Digital_Ink



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amnesia, CA:TWS, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Guy can't get a break, I Don't Even Know, Intentionally Bad Spelling & Grammar, Internal Monologue, M/M, Man on the Bridge, Mind Control, Other, Physical Abuse, Poor Bucky, Unreliable Narrator, italics abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 16:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Digital_Ink/pseuds/Digital_Ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Man on the bridge. One of his targets - the big blond with the impossible body, the one throwing the shield like it was some sort of crazy boomerang. Captain America.</p>
<p>He knew him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I Knew Him [Fragments]

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd. Putting this up before I forget it or lose it - if you find typos or errors, do let me know, although some of them are purposeful. Title is a work in progress, just like the rest of this.
> 
> I apologize now for the uh, unreliable nature of narration and content. I blame only myself.

The Man on the bridge. One of his _targets_ \- the big blond with the impossible body, the one throwing the shield like it was some sort of crazy boomerang. _Captain America._

He _knew_ him.

He’d been given a dossier on Captain America, on Nicolas J. Fury and the Black Widow, had read about their strengths and weaknesses - important when he was supposed to _kill them_. Targets. Captain America, level 6 Target. Super soldier, war hero, relic of the _past_ brought forth from _ice_.  He knew him as a Mission Target…but there was something more, something _else_. And some…some mostly untouched, miserable little _part_ of him knew who those sad blue eyes _really_ belonged to, knew what they would look like brightened by joy or darkened with desire. Fractured memories pressed forward like flashes of lightning, illuminating the dark and barren landscape of his mind to show something small and broken curled in naked misery.

Whatever was left of “Bucky” , if there _was_ anything left - Who the _hell_ is Bucky? “ _I’m Bucky, nice ta’ meetcha!” -_ had long been battered into a ghost in the machine known as the Asset. But the blond on the bridge, that impossible man looking at him with tortured recognition, his face and voice…they _called_ to the ghost of Bucky Barnes, stirring it from the deepest parts of the Asset’s mind.  The glint of the shield, held protectively as he’d fought automatically to _kill_ ,  made it howl and scream and fight to be recognized in the flickering, electricity damaged sections of his brain, tearing at the calm submissive state he dwelt in like the last stand of a cornered beast.

_“I’m Bucky, nice ta’ meetcha!” — “Steve.” The boy spit blood, wiping inelegantly at his bruised face with the air not of the defeated, but of one that would never stand down. “Steve Rogers. Why’d ya’ butt in, I had ‘em on the ropes.”_   — _“Sure ya’ did, Stevie-boy, ’s why he went flyin’ the other way.”_

The Winter Soldier’s expression faltered, eyes glancing down to the right when he should’ve been watching his opponent, but he was distracted like he’d never been.  That same long-silent voice that slipped into his thoughts in flashes called to him with laughter, with open and raw _want,_ answered by a voice similar to his own _. “Steve. Stevie-boy. Stevie-baby. Baby baby baby boy — God— you feel so good—“_ He looked back at the man with the shield, the man with all the fight knocked out of him and clenched his jaw., lifted his gun to shoot him right between those beautiful blue eyes.

Who the _hell_ is Bucky? Bucky Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes is _Bucky_.  A face reflected in a broken mirror a hundred years ago, a face he no longer recognizes as his own. 

The hammer clicks back. He is resolute, he will kill his target: Captain America. Level 6. _‘The timeline has been moved forward.’_   the pressure on the trigger increases - _breathe, sight the target, squeeze the trigger - BOOM_   - but before he can finish that deadly connection there’s ordinance coming his way. Hair flying, eyes narrowed the Winter Soldier bolts; sirens in the distance drawing rapidly closer - he’s missed his targets, he _never_ misses, always death - but he knows only moments of fear before finding his way to the designated extraction point. He will be punished for failing, electricity in his brain or the bite of a blow in his flesh or _worse_ but he’d been well trained and would submit because to do otherwise was _death. “Submit or we’ll burn everything out of you but ash. Do you think you are the only one? “_

Briefly he allows the waking voices wash over him, the flashes and fragments of _someone else_ more interesting than contemplating what will happen to him.  Voices screaming to _go back, go back — gotta get Steve, can’t let him alone - jerk. punk. baby- godyoufeelsogood._ But he can’t make himself move more than his fingers, clenching and unclenching both hands, the soft whirr of his mechanical arm soothing after all this time - _get it off, getitoff! oh god ohgodohgodohgo—_   the light is brilliant and he jerks back to the present with a sibilant grunt and he’s already been loaded into a black transport van, already been rendered harmless with heavy shackles that bit cold into his flesh and blood arm but only added _pressure_ to the metallic one. His fingers open and close like waves on the shore; two men watch him, illegally modified machine guns trained on him with fear in their eyes that he doesn’t _understand_.

Doesn’t _care_ , either. The Winter Soldier is calm and cool and does as he is told — _Your work is a gift to mankind_ \- who said that? Has it been said before or is it something his misfiring brain has put together? The Man on the bridge, the Man, Captain America. _Steve Rogers. Stevie_. Target Level 6. _The timeline has moved forward_ —He shifts a little and the guards lift their guns, one cracks his gum and gives him a _look_ that isn’t appreciated and makes his hackles raise. _Why why why? No don’t— Stop—_ anger swells in his chest, something new and exciting that ebbs too quickly to take proper hold, instead a deep sadness and a flash of blond hair, big hands smudged with graphite and smiling blue eyes settle in.

Disturbing. The Man on the bridge - _I knew him_. He tries it out, aloud, with a voice seldom used for anything but screaming, “I knew him.”  The guards are shaking their heads, one talks into a comm-link build into his headset in guttural tones but the Asset isn’t paying them any attention now, he’s… thinking? _Dreaming_? _Remembering_?

Once more he drifts in the lightening expanses of his mind, his memories. It’s all broken up and confusing - like so much shattered glass, each shard showing a different memory, a different reality. His face. _His_ face. Hands and lips and sunlight through dingy curtains. Blisters and scrapes, blood and guts and horror and bullets flying. Light and pain and _pain and why won’t they stop, why why why Steve ohgod Stevie-baby-you-feelsogood—_ A heavy hand snaps him back to the present. His mouth is open slightly so he shuts it, empty eyes looking from face-to-face-to-face. 

Who does he know? Who does he _not know_?  Has he worked with these people before? His body says _yes_ but his mind is a blank field of onyx and broken glass, with lightning flashing here and there, melting things together or breaking them apart until he can’t tell _what is what_. There’s Pierce - not his handler, no, but his God. The Man in Charge. He’s leaning back slightly, words are coming from Pierce but he’s not wholly listening because _he’s heard this before_. He _knows it_ , just like he _knows_ the Man on the bridge, which is to say that it could be a dream or it could be truth but either way it _feels real_.

When Pierce stops talking the Asset looks to the Strike Team lead. _Rumlow_. His expression is almost petulant, like he _knows_ what will happen if he speaks, if he says what is going to come out of his mouth, but he can’t help himself and he is sad, so very _sad_ because he will lose these shards too. Has to. 

It’s happened before. _Oh god stopstop why oh god stop — Do you think you are the only one? Submit!_ But his mouth is opening to spill his secret-that-isn’t-a-secret. “The Man on the bridge…I knew him.” He’s given some bullshit about an earlier op and then there’s a _flash_ in his mind and he’s seeing Steve leaping onto the roof he’s trying to _leave_ , throwing that ridiculous shield - _“You’re gonna keep the uniform, right?”_ \- and it’s not bullshit but he didn’t recognize him then. Didn’t _know him_ then.

“But…I knew him.”  

And he can’t _help_ the way his heart sinks, the way his mouth moves to make a shape used only by ghosts at that point, nor can he help the fear that threatens to choke him when Pierce says to wipe him and start over. _Start over_. How many times has he heard that phrase to be so familiar? To cause such an automatic reaction? He’s already screaming inside but he wets his lower lip and opens for the bite-guard with an expression they haven’t seen in _years_ \- almost defiant like he’s taking this because he _wants to_ , not because he’s an animal and they _own him_ \- but it doesn’t last long because he’s being pushed back and he’s hyperventilating already and that’s _good_ because for this to work he needs to _fear_ them.

Pierce stays only long enough to watch the first volts tear through him, to hear the first muffled screams before leaving and in the white-hot light tearing him apart, it is the ghost, Bucky, who _watches him leave_.


End file.
